Traditional African Healing Ceremony in a U.S. Population
Status
Conditions
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Details and patient eligibility
About
Pre-agricultural societies almost universally used healing ceremonies that involved reverence, rhythm and dance in the presence of a healer. It is believed that we are "wired" for such experiences and they foster an integrative mode of consciousness similar to that of mindfulness based stress reduction, which has been shown to have therapeutic effects in a variety of conditions. Collaborator Ava Lavonne Vinesett of the Duke Dance Program has developed a healing ceremony based in sub-Saharan African traditions. The investigators plan is to have 25 subjects with a variety of clinical conditions participate in this ceremony. Subjects will then be asked to write a commentary about their experience and to participate in a focus group discussion. It is anticipated that the study will give us some idea of how promising this approach would be and what kinds of patients might benefit. Safety issues are minimal and include the possibility of injury (though the dancing is not strenuous) and psychological distress.
Enrollment
Sex
Ages
Volunteers
Inclusion criteria
- Age 25 to 65 with one of the diagnoses listed above or with 8 visits to their provider in the last year and with no diagnosis of chronic illness.
Exclusion criteria
- physical disability making participation difficult and previous experience with a similar ceremony, for instance while growing up in Africa.
Trial design
Primary purpose
Allocation
Interventional model
Masking
17 participants in 1 patient group
Trial contacts and locations
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Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov
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